Cricinfo has been publishing the dream teams for each country one-by-one. Since India is yet to make an appearance, I thought why not I give a shot to the all-time-XI of Indian Cricket Team.

Openers:
There is no doubt who the two openers would be – Sunil Gavaskar & Virender Sehwag. I am willing to stake my life, that nobody can replace these two.

Middle Order:
Number 4 position is secure – no one can budge SRT from it.
To claim stake to the remaining two positions, I can immediately think of many players – Vijay Merchant, Vijay Hazare, Gundappa Viswanath, Pataudi, Dilip Vengsarkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.
At the end of the day my choice would be Vengsarkar for #3, and Dravid for #5.

Allrounder:
I know Kapil Dev is the best allrounder India has ever produced, but I would keep him as a bowler in the team, and would take in Vinoo Mankad as the batting allrounder.

Wicket Keeper:
Farokh Engineer or Kiran More or Kirmani or Dhoni? Now this is a tough one – the best batsman among these is without a doubt Dhoni, but the best wicketkeeper would be either Engineer or Kirmani. I would choose Kirmani over Engineer as he had to keep to one of the best bowlers of India – Kapil Dev, after keeping to the spin-quartet flawlessly for many years.

Bowlers:
In all Cricinfo articles they have chosen three fast bowlers, and one spinner. I would instead go for the best four bowlers that India produced. Two players are automatically chosen – Kapil Dev and Anil Kumble.

For the other two bowlers I don’t see any clear contenders. If I look at the post-90 era, only two people stand out – Javagal Srinath and Bhajji. The spin-quartet from 70s – Bedi, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Venkataraghavan. And India’s fast bowlers from their opening test – Amar Singh and Mohammed Nissar who earned very high praise from English batsmen even 30+ years after having played them.

I would go with B Chandrasekhar as the second spinner (he was the best of the lot), and Amar Singh (the best fast bowler India had before Kapil) as the opening partner for Kapil Dev.